C# Essentials

Attributes

[[ target :]? attribute-name (

positional-param+ |

[ named-param = expression ]+ |

positional-param +, [ named-param = expression ] + )?]

Attributes are language constructs that can decorate a code element (assemblies, modules, types, members, return values, and parameters) with additional information.

In every language, you specify information associated with the types, methods, parameters, and other elements of your program. For example, a type can specify a list of interfaces that it derives from, or a parameter can specify how its values are to be passed with modifiers such as the ref modifier in C#. The limitation of this approach is that you can only associate information with code elements using the predefined constructs that the language itself provides.

Attributes allow programmers to add to the types of information associated with these code elements. For example, serialization in the .NET Framework uses various serialization attributes applied to types and fields to define how these code elements are serialized. This is more flexible than requiring the language to have special syntax for serialization.

Attribute Classes

An attribute is defined by a class that inherits (directly or indirectly) from the abstract class System.Attribute . When specifying an attribute on an element, the attribute name is the name of the type. By convention the derived type name ends with the word “Attribute”, but this suffix isn’t required.

In this example we specify that the Foo ...